So circiling back to what started this tangent, the argument initially presented was that Wanda was the hero because she beat up the villains.
I feel like I have demonstrated that Wanda is no more heroic in this story than any of the villains. At the end of the day its one villain beating up another, its Thanos vs Ultron if you will. Its basically a turf war.
Absolutely not. She's a hero tragically fallen into a psychotic break, inadvertently hurting others without conscious awareness that that's what she's doing. She's not the hero of
this story, and as far as I can see no one in all 270+ posts of this thread has claimed that she is. She's a tragic victim of her trauma, and a threat to innocents without intending to be one. As opposed to Agatha, who actually chooses to hurt others for personal power and just for funsies. And Director Hayward, who desecrated a body and deliberately traumatized Wanda with the sight of that desecration as part of his own pursuit of power. Monica and Jimmy and Darcy and Vision are the heroes of the story.
Wanda starts to step back to her heroine status at the end of the story when she realizes what she's done and tries to undo the harm, even at the cost of her family. That doesn't mean she's entirely redeemed, of course. And then she retreats into isolation to try to learn more about her powers, and the Darkhold does its thing and pushes her back into darkness and into full villain status.
in the real world a mentally unstable kidnapper doesnt get to walk away because they said sorry and let their victims go. They certainly arent called heroic, even moreso when its implied that Wanda is torturing the people in the town and the children she has suspended in their rooms are slowing dying. Also Agatha is the person attempting to help the town, albeit for her own ends but Wanda opposing her certainly isnt a sign of moral decency.
Agatha isn't trying to help the town. Intent matters. She just wants the power. That she winds up shocking Wanda into awareness of what she's doing is ironic; evil containing the seeds of its own destruction.
Wanda gets to walk away, as was discussed in the Wandavision thread, because no one's capable of stopping her. She's an absurdly powerful supernatural being, and unfortunately no one has the ability to MAKE her get therapy, and no one left around knows enough to warn her about the danger of the Darkhold.